The hash command

To monitor the progress of a transfer, it can be useful to enter the hash command before the transfer. This instructs ftp to print a `#' character for every 1024 bytes of data received. So long as a # appears every so often, the ftp is still in progress, and there are no problems.

   ftp> hash
   Hash mark printing on (1024 bytes/hash mark).
   ftp> get paper.txt
   200 PORT command okay.
   150 Opening data connection for paper.txt (0.50.50.54,1322).
   #################
   226 Transfer complete.
   16494 bytes sent in 0.98 seconds (16 Kbytes/s)
   ftp>

The file transferred in this example was 15788 bytes in length, which with communication overheads was transferred in 16494 bytes. This causes 17 # marks to be printed.